Major Spoilers Question Of The Day: By Your Powers Combined Edition

There are a LOT of super-heroes in the world, and I’ve made it my business to know as many as my bulbous gray matter can retain, especially those who get no respect from the general public. Back in the 1980s, your humble MS-QOTD had nothing but disdain for the adventures of Captain Planet, but as I’ve aged, I find the show’s lack of pretension to be kind of endearing. One thing you could always count on the good Cap’n to do was hammer home the message with the full power of his freakish alien-blue body and the cast was remarkably diverse (even if the token white jerk kid got to be leader). Indeed, The Planeteers have a lot of pretty impressive moments in the hundred or so episodes, and their array of abilities are the prototype for the proverbial Five-Man Band hero configuration, leading us to today’s elemental query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) has a penchant for fire-based powers which my mother always attributed to being born under the sign of Sagittarius, asking: Which of The Planeteers’ powers do you find most attractive: Earth, Air, Fire, Water or Heart?

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Heart, because what it really is, is the power of communication. Ma-Ti, being just a kid, didn’t fully understand to immensity of such power. It wasn’t just about allowing people to talk to each other regardless of language or even to talk to animals. Heart gave him the power to understand other people and their motivations. Basically see through lies.

For me? Earth. From what I remember it was the one power that had real lasting effects after the kid stopped actively manipulating his element. With that I could fix all the potholes I have to deal with. Heh. Since just having a snazzy power isn’t enough, I could probably make a lot of money doing it, too. Fix a section of road in 15 minutes and knock off for the rest of the day.

No, I actually have to go with Heart. A lot of people I know call it a “useless” power, but I think it might actually be the most useful in the right hands. Plus if I had it, I might actually understand humans a little better as most of them simply confound me. Kids are fine, but most adults are like a completely different species. For some reason I understand animals better than I do people (we can’t have conversations or anything, but even wild or “mean” animals seem to want to be playful and affectionate with me and I can often calm down an animal that might otherwise be frightened or attacking people or other animals).

The Author

Matthew Peterson

Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture!